Monday, December 24, 2012

Israel’s large Palestinian minority is often spoken of in terms of the threat it poses to the Jewish majority.

Palestinian citizens’ reproductive rate constitutes a “demographic time bomb”, while their main political programme – Israel’s reform into “a state of all its citizens” – is proof for most Israeli Jews that their compatriots are really a “fifth column”.

But who would imagine that Israeli Jews could be so intimidated by the innocuous Christmas tree?

This issue first came to public attention two years ago when it was revealed that Shimon Gapso, the mayor of Upper Nazareth, had banned Christmas trees from all public buildings in his northern Israeli city.

“Upper Nazareth is a Jewish town and all its symbols are Jewish,” Gapso said. “As long as I hold office, no non-Jewish symbol will be presented in the city.”

The decision reflected in part his concern that Upper Nazareth, built in the 1950s as the centrepiece of the Israeli government’s “Judaization of the Galilee” programme, was failing dismally in its mission.

Far from “swallowing up” the historic Palestinian city of Nazareth next door, as officials had intended, Upper Nazareth became over time a magnet for wealthier Nazarenes who could no longer find a place to build a home in their own city. That was because almost all Nazareth’s available green space had been confiscated for the benefit of Upper Nazareth.

Instead Nazarenes, many of them Palestinian Christians, have been buying homes in Upper Nazareth from Jews – often immigrants from the former Soviet Union – desperate to leave the Arab-dominated Galilee and head to the country’s centre, to be nearer Tel Aviv.

The exodus of Jews and influx of Palestinians have led the government to secretly designate Upper Nazareth as a “mixed city”, much to the embarrassment of Gapso. The mayor is a stalwart ally of far-right politician Avigdor Lieberman and regularly expresses virulently anti-Arab views, including recently calling Nazarenes “Israel-hating residents whose place is in Gaza” and their city “a nest of terror in the heart of the Galilee”. Although neither Gapso nor the government has published census figures to clarify the city’s current demographic balance, most estimates suggest that at least a fifth of Upper Nazareth’s residents are Palestinian. The city’s council chamber also now includes Palestinian representatives.

Christmas trees "offensive to Jewish eyes"

But Gapso is not alone in his trenchant opposition to making even the most cursory nod towards multiculturalism. The city’s chief rabbi, Isaiah Herzl, has refused to countenance a single Christmas tree in Upper Nazareth, arguing that it would be “offensive to Jewish eyes”.

That view, it seems, reflects the official position of the country’s rabbinate. In so far as they are able, the rabbis have sought to ban Christmas celebrations in public buildings, including in the hundreds of hotels across the country.

A recent report in the Haaretz newspaper, on an Israeli Jew who grows Christmas trees commercially, noted in passing: “Hotels – under threat of losing kashrut certificates – are prohibited by the rabbinate from decking their halls in boughs of holly or, heaven forbid, putting up even the smallest of small sparkly Christmas tree in the corner of the lobby.”

In other words, the rabbinate has been quietly terrorizing Israeli hotel owners into ignoring Christmas by threatening to use its powers to put them out of business. Denying a hotel its kashrut (kosher) certificate would lose it most of its Israeli and foreign Jewish clientele.

Few mayors or rabbis find themselves in the uncomfortable position of needing to go public with their views on the dangers of Christmas decorations. In Israel, segregation between Jews and Palestinians is almost complete. Even most of the handful of mixed cities are really Jewish cities with slum-like ghettoes of Palestinians living on the periphery.

Apart from Upper Nazareth, the only other “mixed” place where Palestinian Christians are to be found in significant numbers is Haifa, Israel’s third largest city. Haifa is often referred to as Israel’s most multicultural and tolerant city, a title for which it faces very little competition.

Non-Jewish New Year celebrations "seriously forbidden"

But the image hides a dirtier reality. A recent letter from Haifa’s rabbinate came to light in which the city’s hotels and events halls were reminded that they must not host New Year’s parties at the end of this month (the Jewish New Year happens at a different time of year). The hotels and halls were warned that they would be denied their kashrut licences if they did so.

“It is a seriously forbidden to hold any event at the end of the calendar year that is connected with or displays anything from the non-Jewish festivals,” the letter states.

After the letter was publicized on Facebook, Haifa’s mayor, Yona Yahav, moved into damage limitation mode, overruling the city’s rabbinical council on 23 December and insisting that parties would be allowed to go ahead. Whether Yahav has the power to enforce his decision on the notoriously independent-minded rabbinical authorities is still uncertain.

But what is clear is that there is plenty of religious intolerance verging on hatred being quietly exercised against non-Jews, mostly behind the scenes so as not to disturb Israel’s “Jewish and democratic” image or outrage the millions of Christian tourists and pilgrims who visit Israel each year.

The American Jewish Committee was the latest Jewish organization to enlist in the battle to prevent President Barack Obama from naming former Nebraska senator Chuck Hagel to be Secretary of Defense. The onslaught is unprecedented. Never before has virtually the entire organized Jewish community combined to stop a presidential cabinet appointment because it deems the potential nominee insufficiently devoted to Israel. Of course, below the cabinet level, the lobby has been manning the barricades against critics of any Israeli government policies for decades.

The onslaught against Hagel is unique however because the reason for it is not merely that he opposes the rush to war with Iran and favors negotiating an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The U.N. General Assembly has overwhelmingly approved a resolution calling on Israel to quickly open its nuclear program for inspection and backing a high-level conference to ban nuclear weapons from the Middle East which was just canceled.

All the Arab nations and Iran had planned to attend the conference in mid-December in Helsinki, Finland, but the United States announced on Nov. 23 that it wouldn't take place, citing political turmoil in the region and Iran's defiant stance on nonproliferation. Iran and some Arab nations countered that the real reason for the cancellation was Israel's refusal to attend.

The resolution, approved Monday by a vote of 174-6 with 6 abstentions, calls on Israel to join the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty "without further delay" and open its nuclear facilities to inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Those voting "no" were Israel, the U.S., Canada, Marshall Islands, Micronesia and Palau.

Resolutions adopted by the 193-member General Assembly are not legally binding but they do reflect world opinion and carry moral and political weight.

Israel refuses to confirm or deny it has nuclear bombs though it is widely believed to have a nuclear arsenal. It has refused to join the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, or NPT, along with three nuclear weapon states — India, Pakistan and North Korea.

The Arab proposal to create a weapons-of-mass-destruction-free zone in the Mideast, and to pressure Israel to give up its undeclared arsenal of perhaps 80 nuclear warheads, was endorsed at an NPT conference in 1995 but never acted on. In 2010, the 189 parties to the 1970 treaty called for convening a conference in 2012 on the establishment of a WMD-free zone in the Middle East.

The resolution, which was approved by the assembly's disarmament committee before the conference was cancelled, noted the decision to hold it "with satisfaction."

But Israel has long said there first must be a Mideast peace agreement before the establishment of a Mideast zone free of weapons of mass destruction. The region's Muslim nations argue that Israel's undeclared nuclear arsenal presents the greatest threat to peace in the region.

The Israeli government had no immediate comment on Monday's General Assembly vote.

Last week, the General Assembly upgraded the Palestinians to that of a nonmember observer state, endorsing an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank, east Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip.

Just before Monday's vote, Iranian diplomat Khodadad Seifi told the assembly "the truth is that the Israeli regime is the only party which rejected to conditions for a conference." He called for "strong pressure on that regime to participate in the conference without any preconditions."

Israeli diplomat Isi Yanouka said his country has continuously pointed to the danger of nuclear proliferation in the Mideast, singling out Iran and Syria by name.

"All these cases challenge Israel's security and cast a dark shadow at the prospect of embarking on a meaningful regional security process," he said.

"The fact that the sponsors include in this anti-Israeli resolution language referring to the 2012 conference proves above all the ill-intent of the Arab states with regard to this conference," Yanouka said.

Syrian diplomat Abdullah Hallak told the assembly his government was angry that the conference wasn't going to take place because of "the whim of just one party, a party with nuclear warheads."

"We call on the international community to put pressure on Israel to accept the NPT, get rid of its arsenal and delivery systems, in order to allow for peace and stability in our region," he said.

The conference's main sponsors are the U.S., Russia and Britain. British Foreign Office Minister Alistair Burt has said it is being postponed, not cancelled.

While the United States voted against the resolution, it voted in favor of two paragraphs in it that were put to separate votes. Both support universal adherence to the NPT, and call on those countries that aren't parties to ratify it "at the earliest date." The only "no" votes on those paragraphs were Israel and India.

Saturday, December 01, 2012

An Israeli street sign placed in the occupied West Bank (near Bethlehem) on Road 375 going from El-Khader Junction with road 60 (Tunnel Road) to Ela Valley. The sign is placed just before crossing from Israel to the West Bank, near the illegal, Jewish-only colony/settlement of Betar Illit and the Palestinian villages of Husan, Batir and Wadi Fuqeen (Betar Checkpoint). It says in Hebrew:

"Welcome to Betar Checkpoint

This checkpoint is for the passage of Israelis only. It is forbidden to pass and/or drive a person through this checkpoint, who is not Israeli!!

"Israeli" - a resident of Israel, a person who lives in the area and is a citizen of Israel, or a person ENTITLED TO MAKE ALIYAH TO ISRAEL ACCORDING TO THE [JEWISH] LAW OF RETURN, 1950, AS VALID IN ISRAEL" (emphasis added)

(PHOTO CREDIT: Dudy Tzfati via Roy, TRANSLATION CREDIT: Dudy Tzfati)

...and another such sign just sent to me by a friend:

Photo taken in 2006 at Eliyahu Checkpoint just south of the
Palestinian city of Qalqilya. This one is in Arabic on left side and Hebrew
on right side.

Friday, November 30, 2012

Palestine not only has a pie in the sky, it also has one off the coast of Gaza and many more across the land. The pies here are strategic economic assets for a Palestinian economy worthy of a state. But all of them are under total Israeli military control, rendering them paralyzed at best.

Until the collective international community — not just the United States — starts using its political weight to hold Israel accountable for holding an entire economy — and people — hostage, the reality on the ground is bound to get worse and the forthcoming violence more deadly and damaging.

If a man from Mars descended to observe Israel’s attack on the Gaza strip, he would have seen one group of humans trapped in a densely populated area, largely defenseless while a modern air force destroyed their buildings at will. He might have learned that the people in Gaza had been essentially enclosed for several years in a sort of ghetto, deprived by the Israeli navy of access to the fish in their sea, generally unable to travel or to trade with the outside world, barred by Israeli forces from much of their arable land, all the while surveyed continuously from the sky by a foe which could assassinate their leaders at will and often did.

This Martian also might learn that the residents of Gaza—most of them descendants of refugees who had fled or been driven from Israel in 1948—had been under Israeli occupation for 46 years, and intensified closure for six, a policy described by Israeli officials as “economic warfare” and privately by American diplomats as intended to keep Gaza “functioning at the lowest level possible consistent with avoiding a humanitarian crisis.” He might note that Gaza’s water supply is failing, as Israel blocks the entry of materials that could be used to repair and upgrade its sewage and water-treatment infrastructure. That ten percent of its children suffer from malnutrition and that cancer and birth defects are on the rise. That the fighting had started after a long standing truce had broken down after a series of tit-for-tat incidents, followed by the Israeli assassination of an Hamas leader, and the typical Hamas response of firing inaccurate rockets, which do Israel little damage.

But our man from Mars is certainly not an American. And while empathy for the underdog is said to be an American trait, this is not true if the underdog is Palestinian.

Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Police order Palestinian workers off buses to West Bank, at request of Israeli settlers

Settlers say these Palestinians pose a security risk; Transportation Ministry says it is considering adding bus lines between West Bank roadblocks and central Israel; these would be geared toward Palestinian laborers.

By Chaim Levinson | 05:45 27.11.12

Police have begun ordering Palestinian laborers with legal work permits off buses from the Tel Aviv area to the West Bank, following complaints from settlers that Palestinians pose a security risk by riding the same buses as them.

The Transportation Ministry says it is considering adding bus lines between West Bank roadblocks and central Israel; these would be geared toward Palestinian laborers. Still, such a plan would take at least a few months to go into effect.

Earlier this month a bus operated by Afikim, a company with a government tender to serve West Bank settlements, pulled up at a police roadblock near the settlement of Elkana. The police, who later cited security reasons, ordered all the Palestinian passengers off - leaving them to walk several kilometers to the nearest checkpoint and pay for a taxi home, said an Israeli army reservist who was posted at the checkpoint.

He told Haaretz that the laborers, most of whom work in the Tel Aviv area and usually take the bus home, were angered by the incident. That wasn't the only time the workers were pulled off the bus, though.

"Friends at the checkpoint told me that the same thing happened the next day," said the reservist. "The police confiscated their ID cards, brought the IDs to the checkpoint, and the Palestinians had to get off the bus again and walk several kilometers to the checkpoint."

When asked about the incidents, the police said they wanted to make sure Palestinian workers were returning to the West Bank from the same place they left it. They said it was necessary to "close the circle" to ensure the Palestinians weren't staying in Israel overnight, which requires a separate permit.

"The fact that a laborer has a legal work permit doesn't allow him to travel directly to the territories without going through an established crossing point," the police said in a statement. "That's why there is enforcement activity, for security purposes."

The number of Palestinians working in Israel has increased in the past two years to 29,000 a day, up from 22,000 in 2010.

Palestinian workers generally do not enter the settlements to get on and off the bus, since that would require special authorization. Usually they get on and off along the Trans-Samaria Highway (Route 5).

All the same, Ron Nachman, the mayor of the West Bank settlement of Ariel, has announced on his Facebook page that he has spoken with the army, police and Transportation Ministry about "stopping Palestinians from boarding the buses that go to Ariel."

"All of them are working on this problem, and we hope that they will soon find a solution to the reality that is bothering our people," he wrote.

Commenters left offensive responses to the post, with one referring to the Palestinian passengers as terrorists and another as monkeys.

"On the Ariel lines there are more terrorists than Jewish residents," said one. A woman wrote that she couldn't visit her parents in Ariel because she was too scared to get on the bus, and another commenter said "finally you remembered that we have buses filled with Arabs?"

Saturday, November 24, 2012

For anyone who thinks we exaggerate about the state of affairs inside the Israeli society, I ask you to watch the video in this story. In no way do I assert that these lunatics (led by an elected Israeli lawmaker, MK=Member of Knesset) represent all of Israel, but fascism has a beginning, and this is it!!!

Imagine if the table was turned here and Palestinians were the ones speaking in this despicable way...just imagine.

Before all the comments start flowing, if you want to brush this aside as just a few nut cases, feel free. If you want to reflect deeper, read Israeli Professor Nurit Peled-Elhanan's book about the indoctrination inside Israel. You can find her on YouTube too.

This is assuming, of course, that the American strategy is not to see the fate of Palestinians to be the same as that of American Indians.

How many failures before we call it policy?,

Sam

---

The New York Times

November 23, 2012

America's Failed Palestinian Policy

By YOUSEF MUNAYYER

MORE than 160 Palestinians and 5 Israelis are dead, and as the smoke clears over Gaza, the Israelis will not be more secure and Palestinians' hopes for self-determination remain dashed. It is time for a significant re-evaluation of the American policies that have contributed to this morass.

The failure of America's approach toward the Israelis and the Palestinians, much like its flawed policies toward the region in general, is founded on the assumption that American hard power, through support for Israel and other Middle Eastern governments, can keep the legitimate grievances of the people under wraps.

But events in Gaza, like those in Egypt and elsewhere, have proved once again that the use of force is incapable of providing security for Israel, when the underlying causes of a people's discontent go unaddressed.

The United States government must ask: what message do America's policies send to Israelis and Palestinians?

Washington's policies have sent counterproductive messages to the Palestinians that have only increased the incentives for using violence.

American policy initially signaled to Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah, a Palestinian party committed to the idea of negotiations, that talks would yield a Palestinian state on 22 percent of the territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. At the same time the United States, which has monopolized the role of mediator for itself, failed to do anything to change Israel's policies of settlement expansion in the West Bank.

Palestinians' patience grew thin as the number of Israeli settlers tripled between the beginning of the "peace process" in 1991 and today. Palestinians learned that the message they initially got about a peace process' leading to statehood was either made in bad faith or an outright lie.

The message they ultimately understood from observing America's reflexively pro-Israel policy was that the peace process was merely a cover for endless Israeli colonialism.

America's policy toward Hamas also sent the wrong message; rather than promoting peace, it only created incentives for the use of arms. Sanctions imposed after Hamas's 2006 electoral victory told the party that Israel and the United States would marginalize it unless it accepted the same principles put forth by the so-called quartet of Middle East peacemakers that Fatah accepted — namely, recognizing Israel's right to exist and renouncing violence. Having seen what that path yielded for Fatah — nothing but continued Israeli colonization — Hamas was not persuaded and chose instead to reject those principles. In return, the Gaza Strip was put under a brutal siege.

Hamas has used armed struggle to achieve certain objectives, albeit at significant cost. Its leaders saw the removal of Israeli settlers from Gaza in 2005 as a victory for their methods, as well as the return of thousands of prisoners last year, in exchange for a single captured Israeli soldier. The returns may be limited and the costs significant, but when the other options are either subjugation or the path their compatriots in Fatah face, Hamas is likely to make the same calculation — and choose violence every time.

The cease-fire announced Wednesday will only perpetuate the same incentive structure. Through the use of force, Hamas gained favorable terms. The Israelis agreed to ease collective punishment of Palestinians in Gaza and end extrajudicial assassinations. While both of these are against international law to begin with and long-term Israeli adherence to these terms is not guaranteed, these are nonetheless commitments that Hamas believes could only have been extracted through armed struggle.

Further, the fighting brought attention to the open wound of Gaza, which the world had forgotten. Foreign ministers and dignitaries visited the strip and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton flew to the region for the cease-fire announcement. The real danger is if the underlying causes of discontent in Gaza — the denial of human rights and dignity for Palestinians — continue to go ignored once rockets stop targeting Israel. This has been the case each time in the past.

What message is sent to Palestinians when the only time we pay attention to their plight, and the only time they make gains, is through the use of arms?

Likewise, our policy toward Israel has also sent counterproductive messages. As the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority came into the West Bank, many of the costs of being responsible for occupied Palestinians were transferred from Israel to the authority while the entrenchment of occupation continued unabated. This not only reduced the costs of occupation for Israel; it continues to be rewarding as Israel has been able to reap political and economic benefits from exploiting Palestinian land and natural resources.

Moreover, Washington has economically, diplomatically and militarily supported Israel as it continues with its settlement project and thus it is no wonder that some in Israel continue to believe that perpetual occupation, or de facto apartheid, is a viable policy option.

By constantly condemning Palestinian armed resistance, and failing to condemn Israeli settlement expansion and repression of nonviolent Palestinian dissent, the message the United States is sending the Palestinian people is this: All resistance to occupation is illegitimate.

No nation on earth would accept that, nor is it realistic to expect it to.

The disastrous results of the incentive structure we've created have been on full display in recent days. Moving forward, Washington must fundamentally re-evaluate the messages it sends to all parties because we've currently set them on the path to even greater — and potentially unmanageable — escalations in the future.

Sam Bahour - Photo

About Me

Sam Bahour is a Palestinian-American based in Al-Bireh/Ramallah, Palestine and is managing partner of Applied Information Management (AIM), which specializes in business development with a niche focus on start-ups and providing executive counsel.
Bahour was instrumental in the establishment of two publicly traded firms: the Palestine Telecommunications Company (PALTEL) and the Arab Palestinian Shopping Center. He is currently an independent director at the Arab Islamic Bank, advisory board member of the Open Society Foundations’ Arab Regional Office, and completed a full term as a Board of Trustees member and treasurer at Birzeit University. In addition to his presidential appointment to serve as a general assembly member of the Palestine Investment Fund, Palestine’s $1B sovereign wealth fund, Bahour serves in various capacities in several community organizations, including co-founder and chairman of Americans for a Vibrant Palestinian Economy, board member of Just Vision in New York, board member and policy adviser at Al-Shabaka, the Palestinian Policy Network, and secretariat member of the Palestine Strategy Group.